Surfaces and Deeps: An Excerpt About Agriculture
This segment highlights the food basket of largely this town: agriculture. In the blog ‘plot and twists’, our neighborhood is mostly occupied by homeowners, kitchen gardening is common with most households growing their own vegetables (collard greens), there is a central market located at the fringe of our neighborhood (Sokoni area-literally meaning market in Swahili language) approximately 600 meters from our neighborhood.
Agricultural yields can be boosted in a waste management model: reuse, recycle and reduce: if neighbors work together.
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In the constituency at large, large scale farming is done at Mbegi with most crops growing being traditional vegetables (Kunde, Managu, Sagaa, Amaranth) and greens (Sukuma wiki, Spinach, broccoli), potatoes, carrots, fruits although seasonal (mangoes, bananas, plums), other fruits are mostly outsourced from other counties, maize, sorghum and wheat does not do well in this area. The town’s food source is from Mbegi where they rely on irrigation as the type of soil in our area is clay soil which dries out quickly even when it rains heavily. Food produce is mostly affordable as most farmers are the sellers in the market except when brokerage is involved but vegetables especially during the wet seasons are cost friendly making our town an affordable town to live in.
There is one slaughterhouse in the town located further West away from the densely populated area, where livestock keepers take their cattle, pigs and poultry to be slaughtered for supply in butcheries. Most homeowners are poultry keepers with most rearing chicken, ducks, turkeys and guinea fowls for both domestic and commercial purposes. Meat is quite expensive as the sale price is similar to that of Nairobi City. Depending on the consumer, the difference could be in the taste, as in this part of the region livestock and poultry are free range while in other parts they are mostly caged which could bring about variation in taste.
Kitchen gardening does so well in our neighborhood due to re-use of wastes, although in small scale, it emulates a circular economy in waste management. Neighbors who keep livestock give the excrement as manure for crop growers, in exchange, whatever remains after consumption by households, for example, maize cobs, potato, tomato peels and food remains are fed to the cattle kept by livestock keepers. This practice works because of the social cohesion that homeowners have including a guild ‘Chama’. From a planner whose main concern is the environment, I applaud my neighborhood for being pace setters. Given that the country eliminated the use of plastic bags except for use by key industries, if other wastes could be recycled and reused, this will mean cleaner neighborhoods and a cleaner Kenya.
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